Atlas
by Ephemerale
Summary: Once condemned by fate to shoulder the burden of the safety of all the known worlds, the crew of the Normandy must now struggle to find their place in a galaxy that no longer needs them; Post ME3. Shenko.
1. Recovered

"…multiple abrasions, sublexation of the patella, pneumothorax of the left lung, fracture of the tibia and clavicle, eight broken phalanges, compound fracture of the humerus, retroperitoneal bleeding as well as breaks in costals two, three, and four…"

The room was spinning, spinning in shades of luminescent whites and murky grays, faces obscured by blue masks blurred by the black spots floating at the edges of her vision. She did not understand most of the jargon that the masked faces spoke with; she had never had any more than the most rudimentary training in being a field medic, but what little she was able to glean from their words was not good. But she knew most of it already. It had been hell limping on a leg she'd known was broken; wrapping swollen, purple fingers around her gun had made her teeth grit in pain. And then later, when she lay trapped beneath the rubble of the citadel, there had been a rattle in her chest, the strange, gurgling sound every time she'd sucked in a breath, to let her know that something was wrong with her lungs.

"…a fracture at L2…" the voice continued as gloved hands poked and prodded at her injuries, cataloguing them, causing a fresh wave of agony to rush over her and her vision to erupt in stars. And through the stars came a light, hot, blinding, making her wince and blink and try to escape it. She remembered another light, searing, consuming, as the ground had crumbled to pieces beneath her feet.

"Ocular reflexes are good," the voice added, and Shepard swallowed, the action causing her throat to erupt into flames. Oh; so that's what the light was from. There was a beat of silence, followed by a "Yes, sir." Shepard tried to focus more of her attention on her surroundings as an attempt to escape the all consuming pain, and quickly realized that the only sounds she could hear were coming from her right side. There was silence to her left. She turned her head to look in that direction, and her neck screamed in protest, causing her to bite her tongue so hard that it bled in an attempt to keep from crying out. But she had achieved her goal. There were nurses standing there, the blue masks on their face changing shape as their jaws worked in speech, but there was no sound. Deaf. She was deaf in her left ear.

Fixable, she attempted to remind herself, and trivial in the scheme of things. She'd been pinned underneath the citadel for what seemed like years, and God only knew what her crew… Her crew… What had happened to them? The last time she'd seen Garrus he had lain still in the shadow of the twisted metal of the Mako the reaper's eye had torn apart; Liara had lain not far away, her body sprawled over the ground, her limbs bent at unnatural angles. And Kaidan… she hadn't seen him at all. Sudden panic seized her, overwhelming the pain and drowning out all thoughts besides whiskey eyes and hollow promises.

"Kai…" she attempted, but the word gurgled out of her throat, the sound distorted. She reached up a hand, gritting her teeth against the pain, and tried to catch the sleeve of one of the nurses. "K…Kai…" she tried again, but for the life of her she couldn't get the word to form. She had to know that he was alright, that he'd made it. She didn't want to survive to rebuild the world she had sacrificed so much to save if he wasn't going to be a part of it. If he was dead, she wanted to tell the doctors to let her go, to let her slip away and simply be with him. "Kai…"

"Put her out, dammit!" came a harsh order from her right, and Shepard remembered a similar command from a different time; a dark haired Australian woman shouting at a traitor to put her under before taking her hand and soothing her back into the darkness. And now, just like then, her vision blurred further, everything dimming, dimming, dimming, down to nothing but black.


	2. Distrust

Kaidan could not bring himself to like Miranda Lawson. Besides the fact that the woman had been a staunch supporter of Cerberus for the majority of her adult life (which, really, was more than enough to condemn her on its own), she was haughty, cold, calculating, and her cool, unblinking gaze was frankly unnerving. Not to mention the fact that she hovered over Shepard's body constantly, glaring at him with those oddly empty eyes whenever he came too close, acting as though she was attempting to protect Shepard from him. And yet… for that very same reason, he couldn't bring himself to hate the woman. Something about her softened when she looked at Shepard, and there was a rare tenderness in her gaze when she was by the prone woman's side. And besides that, she had saved Shepard's life.

The doctors had done their best on their own, Kaidan knew, but the extensive cybernetic implants Cerberus had rebuilt Shepard with had stumped them. Due to a skin weave, her flesh healed quickly, but the physicians had a difficult time setting bones infused with a carbon-steel alloy. The auditory implants interfered with their ability to perform the tympanoplasty that would have restored her hearing, and they had difficulty determining the integrity of her spinal cord with the entire thoracic portion of her spinal column being composed of metal. Not to mention the engineered organs that the doctors didn't have the tech or the knowledge to repair. And so Liara, convalescing in a hospital room turned Shadow Broker base not far away, had called Ms Lawson, who had then been integral in Shepard's recovery.

She was in the room with Shepard now, Kaidan noted with a flash of resentment, as she always seemed to be, like the three headed dog of mythology Cerberus was named after guarding its charge. Her icy gaze was softened to something almost warm as she checked over her patient, and once again Kaidan reminded himself to be grateful, that without the ice queen his Shepard wouldn't be alive now; wouldn't have even lived past Alchera. Kaidan coughed, and Lawson's eyes jerked up to meet his, her gaze going frosty once more. "Major," she greeted in that heavily accented voice of hers; a voice that could have belonged to the sirens of old… if only it hadn't been laced with undertones of arrogance and conceit.

Kaidan swallowed his impulse to glare at the woman, and instead trained his gaze on Shepard. Her skin was covered in the yellow-brown blotches of healing bruises, her body encased in a hard cast. Tubing ran into what little flesh was exposed, reminding him of the husks that he saw in his nightmares, making him wince. He clenched his jaw, a muscle ticking there at the sudden tension, as he followed the IV in her arm to one of the few precious bags of pain meds that the Alliance had left. Shepard would be livid if she learned that she was being given such preferential treatment. It would be, if she were lucid, her ardent desire, no, command, for the attention she was being given to be turned on the troops instead. But she had yet to wake in a coherent state, and Kaidan was selfishly glad that others were being denied so that Shepard could live. The thought sent a stab of guilt through him as he remembered members of the alliance dying slowly, painfully, in the corridors of the building the Alliance had requisitioned to be a hospital, the hundreds of civilians dying in the streets because said hospital was overflowing and nearly out of supplies.

Kaidan cleared his throat, as though the action could clear away the weight of his conscience as well, and then forced himself to meet Lawson's uncanny blue gaze again. "How is she?" he asked, and the woman shifted her wait to her other foot and crossed her arms over her chest, the action highlighting her genetically enhanced figure. Kaidan kept his eyes on her face, and saw the slight downwards quirk of her lips that he hadn't openly appreciated her figure. In that moment, he remembered what Tali had called her: the Cerberus cheerleader bosh'tet, and repressed a grin. Apparently he did a poor job of it, for her brows quirked upwards in question before she gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head.

"As well as can be expected. Thankfully there was only damage to the L2 vertebra, so her spinal cord just barely survived unscathed. The bone weave seems to be doing its job; the breaks are healing nicely, although she'll likely always have a slight limp; the fracture to the tibia was a bad one, and the damage done to her left knee was extensive. Frankly, though, she's lucky she'll be able to walk at all," Lawson replied, and Kaidan swallowed hard. "But her heart rate is stable, and she's breathing on her own now; the oxygen is just a precaution," she added after a moment's consideration, and Kaidan nodded his head in thanks.

He made his way across the room, limping a little because of the sprain of right ankle, and settled his weight down into the chair at Shepard's bedside with a barely concealed sigh of relief to be off his injured leg. He reached out and gently brushed the back of his hand against Shepard's bruised and swollen face, his throat closing when he thought of how damn close he'd come to losing her. For three days they'd searched for her body, three days of anxiety and terror and panic. And then they had found her, at death's door, a pile of rubble crushing her from waist to foot. Her suit had been destroyed, so he hadn't even picked up a life signature when they'd stumbled across her broken frame. For one horrible, gut wrenching moment, he'd been certain that she was dead. But then there had been the faint, fluttering pulse against his fingertips, the subtle rise and fall of her chest. And then she had been whisked out of his arms and it had been days before he'd been allowed to see her again. Not until the doctors were sure she was stabilized and Lawson was finished running her tests was he able to touch her again.

"May I have a minute?" Kaidan asked, glancing up to meet Lawson's frosty gaze as he brushed his thumb against Shepard's cheekbone, the digit catching on the tubes meant to bring oxygen into her nostrils. She tracked the path of his fingertips with her eyes, her brows coming together into a disapproving frown.

"That really isn't the best idea, Major. Should something go wrong, I need to be here," she replied in that annoyingly aristocratic voice of hers, and Kaidan grit his teeth.

"I've had training as a field medic; if I see that something goes wrong, I'll chime your omnitool immediately," he replied, and then glowered when she let out a bark of condescending laughter.

"A field medic? I hardly think that makes you qualified to…" she began, and Kaidan's glare darkened.

"Lawson," he ground out, and the woman stopped midsentence, glancing between him and Shepard. A few tense moments passed, before she let out a deep, long suffering sigh and pointed to the curtain that divided the room.

"I'll be right over there," she warned him, fixing her unblinking blue stare on him for several moments, as though warning him with her gaze not to do anything she didn't approve of. Kaidan grit his teeth but nodded nonetheless, grateful for even that one, small concession. She stared at him for another long moment before she turned on her heel with almost military precision, her platform boots clicking against the tile as she walked away.

When she was out of sight, Kaidan let out a breath he hadn't even realized that he'd been holding and leaned down to press a kiss against Shepard's forehead. "Hey, Beautiful," he murmured softly, knowing that if she'd been cogniscent of her surroundings she would have instructed him not to use the pet name even as her cheeks would have flushed with pleasure. He settled back into his chair, stretching out the tense, stiff muscles and scrubbing a hand over his weary face.

"Everything is a mess, Shepard. The Alliance is disorganized; we're already starting to run out of food and supplies, none of us in command have gotten any sleep in days," he said softly, focusing on Shepard's face, on the reassuring beeping of the monitors that let him know her condition was stable, anything to forget about the damned ice queen behind the curtain likely eavesdropping on everything he was saying. "And the civilians… they've gotten so used to having no government over the past few months that they want nothing to do with us. We've had to put a curfew in place and, well, that's not going so good," he added, sinking back in his chair and closing his eyes for a moment, his mind running through everything that had gone so wrong so quickly.

"The crew…well, most of the crew… is fine though. The doctors had a hell of a time trying to figure out Turian anatomy until we were able to contact Victus' medic, though. Garrus has a few more scars than he did before, but Tali doesn't seem to mind. She hasn't left his side, although I swear she must call him a bosh'tet thirty times a day," he said with a chuckle, and then placed his hand over the cast that covered hers. "It came as a surprise to the rest of us, the two of them together, but I'll bet you knew. You always seem to know these things about your crew," he added wryly, and he was sure that if she'd been aware, it would have wrung a laugh out of her.

"And Joker…Joker's okay, mostly. He has a couple of broken bones, but nothing he's not used to, Vrolik syndrome and all. But EDI… EDI didn't make it. She just shut down. Joker didn't believe it at first, wouldn't let go of her body, kept telling us that she'd wake up soon. But then we heard about how the same thing happened to the Geth, and… he wanted to bury her. Have a service, like she was a person. The brass wouldn't let him so he did it on his own. Fractured his arm shoveling, but he buried her, made her a gravestone and everything. Some of us… the ones not in the hospital- Traynor, Tali, James, and I… went to the service he held for her once he'd got her buried. He's been drinking a lot lately, refuses to leave the cockpit of the Normandy. But me and the others have been dropping by periodically, forcing him to eat. I think he'll be okay, though. At least I hope," he said, his heart constricting as he spoke. It hadn't been long ago that he was in Joker's shoes, that he had lost the woman he'd loved. But she'd come back to him, had brought him back to life. And he'd come damn close to losing her again.

"Shepard, we need you. You're the glue that holds us all together. None of us know how to reach Joker, but you would know just what to say. And you're a hero, you know, to the civilians. If you spoke to them, they might listen, might resent the Alliance a little bit less. Please, Shepard, wake up soon," he pleaded, his voice rough, his throat tight.

And then his omnitool beeped. Kaidan stifled a groan and glanced down at it to find a message from Hackett blinking on the screen. He let out a deep sigh, and then a dark chuckle, his mouth twisting into a wry smile. "Duty calls," he murmured, and then forced himself to his feet, wincing when he put weight on his sprained ankle. On cue, Lawson sauntered back into the room, her arms crossed over her chest, her brow cocked as she leveled him with a cool stare.

Ignoring her, Kaidan leaned down to press his lips to Shepard's forehead again, cupping her bruised cheek and softly murmuring "I love you," feeling Lawson's gaze on him all the while. He gently brushed his thumb against Shepard's chapped lips, and sighed before straightening.

"Lawson," he said cooly, striving to keep his tone professional. She nodded her farewell to him before turning back to Shepard, effectively dismissing him. Kaidan clenched his jaw as he left the relative peace of the hospital room and back into the chaos of what remained of Earth. He really, really did not care for that Miranda Lawson.


	3. Delusions

The Normandy is lost, sucked through a wormhole and stranded on a virgin planet, Joker as broken as his ship, Donnely and Daniels trying and failing to restore them both. He does not want to live without EDI, without the soothing thrum of the engines, without the freeing feeling of weightlessness that he gets when he flies. And he won't live, not for much longer. There is only a limited amount of medication to help manage Vrolik's Syndrome aboard the Normandy, and without it his brittle bones will crack and fracture, and there will be no doctor aboard to heal him. Soon, his body will be as broken as his heart.

And Garrus, brave, snarky Garrus, will soon be lost as well, his newfound love along with him. There is a limited supply of Dextro-rations; they will starve, slowly, their bodies consuming themselves as their bellies burn with hunger. And they will cling to one another as the rest of the crew turn their heads in guilt and shame, unable to save them, their stomachs full with what they have foraged from the jungle around their crash site. And the pair will join Joker in death, Tali's suit hanging from her skeletal frame as she buries her unmasked face against the plates on Garrus' neck, her body too spent to even allow her the satisfaction of weeping. And Garrus will stroke her back, heedless of how his talons puncture her suit, as his breath shortens and his world goes black.

And Kaidan… Kaidan will do his best to lead the rest of the crew after they bury his closest friends. He will encourage Donnely, Daniels, and Adams to repair the systems for the FTL drive, will scour the star charts to attempt to discover their location. He will keep the crew strong enough to survive, will not allow them to succumb to the all consuming fear and despair that wells deep within them all. And he will not think of Shepard, will not allow himself to imagine where she is, if she is even still alive. To function, he must keep his focus on the present, or the grief will consume him, will cripple him to the point that he will lay down on the bed that they once shared and will never get up again.

But there is only a matter of time before they run out of ammo, out of supplies, and the crew relies on Kaidan's biotics and Daniels' gathering skills to eat. Hunger begins to tighten all of their bellies, and they think more and more about Garrus and Tali, about Joker. Hopelessness begins to settle over the crew like a dark cloud, and even Kaidan's best efforts cannot raise morale. Traynor is the next to go, consumed by loneliness, her mind splintered from all that she has endured. She hides in the brush a ways from the ship and eats her fill of berries she knows are poisonous, since there are no more bullets that could put a quick end to her suffering.

Despondency settles over the crew, until Daniels discovers that she is pregnant. For a moment, there is a beam of light, a bright, burning resurrection of morale at the possibility of new life. They all find themselves wishing that Tali was alive for this; she had always wanted to see a human infant. But the light is snuffed out again, when Donnely holds Daniels in his arms as her body releases a river of blood, as she grips between her legs and begs for the baby to live. But the child does not, and neither does she. A fifth body is buried rather than a new addition to their crew being brought into the world.

They have saved the galaxy at the expense of their lives, their family, their sanity. Fate is cruel and merciless, and looks on impassively at the damage that it has wrought. And though they have lived for others, they die alone.

* * *

Whiskey eyes, swimming in heat and color, blurred by the fuzziness that clouded her vision. Someone was crying, gut wrenching, awful sobs, and she somehow became aware that her throat ached, that her chest was tight and the room distorted because her eyes were full of tears.

"Sh, baby, hush, it's okay; you're okay," That voice. Rich as umber, soft as velvet, husky with the sense of home. _Kaidan._ Her voice cracked on the word, and she realized that she said it aloud. It tasted right on her tongue, the one thing left that made sense in their fucked up world.

"I'm here, I'm here," he crooned, his voice soft as a psalm. She felt his hands against his face, warm, calloused hands, brushing against her cheekbone, his thumb tracing the line where her freckles had been before Cerberus had reconstructed her. An old habit of his. He'd mapped them out once, and created and named constellations of his own from the spots wrought by the sun.

"You got the FTL drive working?" she murmured, her voice raspy with disuse, and saw the warmth in his eyes dim and cloud with confusion. "But then… How did you fly the ship back since Joker… Jeff…" she began, her voice catching on a sob. "Oh, Kaidan… and Garrus and Tali and Traynor and Daniels…and the baby…" she added, tears choking her, her body trembling.

"Baby?" Kaidan demanded, his eyes searching hers before looking over her head, his gaze fearful and questioning. Then the question in his eyes died away, some of the tension eased from his shoulders, and he met her gaze once more.

"Oh, God, Kaidan," Shepard added, ignoring his strange interaction, reaching forwards to curl her fingers around his shirt. "They're buried there, all of them… They're alone in the ground… You left them there; you left them behind. How could you leave them behind?" she demanded, an edge of hysteria creeping into her voice. And through the wave of panic, she saw his eyes darken further, his brows knit together in confusion.

"What are you talking about, Shepard? They're here, they're fine. Garrus and Tali are recouperating not far from here; Joker's busy getting drunk off his ass in the Normandy. I didn't leave anyone anywhere," he murmured, stroking her hair like she was a small child.

"But… but…" Shepard protested, her eyes scanning the room, disoriented and frantic. She caught sight of dark hair and blue eyes out of her peripherals, and she whimpered. "No, not again. I don't want to be Lazarus again, please, Kaidan, no!" she cried, her body convulsing when she heard the smooth, Australian voice that had been present at her rebirth.

"Lawson, what the hell?" Kaidan demanded, his gaze turned away from her, boring into the Cerberus operative. Through a haze of panic and fear and desperation and _red,_ she heard the woman's cool response, felt Kaidan's fingers comb through her hair, before she felt a prick and went down, down, down; down to the black where there was nothing and at last, in the emptiness, everything made sense.


	4. Regs

An ensign snapped to a sharp salute, and Kaidan nodded to the young man on reflex on reflex as he walked past. London was still a mess, as was nearly every once-large city on Earth. But progress was being made, nonetheless. Their first order of business had been to clear the rubble off of and repair the roads, with the second priority being making as many tenements as possible livable again to get the civilians off of the streets. The Normandy, one of the few Alliance vessels to come out of the Reaper War mostly unscathed, was being used as a dormitory for any and all able bodied Alliance soldiers. Since the crew quarters and lounges were being overtaken by the weary, bedraggled soldiers, Kaidan had invited several of the Normandy's crew to stay in the loft. As it stood, Vega and Joker had taken him up on said offer and were both bunking with him. It was almost like Basic all over again.

Kaidan had been put in charge of overseeing the clean up on Bridge St, given the size of the chunks of debris that littered the roads there. The students from his biotic division had been re-assigned to his command, and all were busy using their finely honed skills to lift the rubble off of the roads, blue energy fields shimmering around the massive pieces of stone and cement before they were settled harmlessly in a pile not far away. One of said students caught sight of him as he walked by, and saluted with a world-weary grin. Even the young had lost their innocence, it seemed.

It had yet to be determined what would be done with all the rubble; what was salvageable would be used in the reconstruction, of course, but as for the rest of it… The brass was tossing around the idea of handing it over to talented artisans and commissioning them to create a monument to commemorate the end of the Reaper War. As if the massive, derelict reaper lying in the heart of London wasn't reminder enough. He'd said as much to Hackett once, and the admiral had replied that the Reaper represented the dark shadow of humanity's past; the monument would symbolize hope for their future, the resilience of their species.

Kaidan repressed the urge to sigh, and instead glanced to his left, where said Admiral strode beside him, his shoulders square, his arms crossed behind his back, every ounce of his carriage exuding military precision. "Sir, may I inquire what the true nature of this visit is about?"Kaidan asked, keeping his voice neutral, matching the admiral's stride. The man had come on the pretext of inspecting the clean up, but Kaidan knew that there must have been a deeper purpose. Clearing the roads was a straightforward business, one that would not have merited Hackett devoting any of his precious time to.

The man's brows rose slightly, his mouth quirking upwards at the corners. "Perceptive, Major," Hackett replied, "But then, I would expect nothing less from the second human Spectre." He paused for a moment, and then came to a stop, turning to meet Kaidan's gaze. "I came to ask about Shepard's recovery," he admitted, and Kaidan frowned.

"With all due respect, Sir, don't you have her file? Her progress is clearly outlined…" Kaidan began, but Hackett cut him off.

"By an ex-Cerberus operative whose motives are entirely unclear. She may leave items out of the report or insert falsehoods; Lawson is not to be trusted," Hackett replied, his gaze troubled.

Kaidan's frown deepened, and he nodded slowly, processing Hackett's concern. "Permission to speak freely, Sir?" he requested, and Hackett nodded in acquiescence. "Sir, I don't particularly trust or care for Ms. Lawson either, but I can guarantee you that her motives regarding Shepard are pure. She is one of Shepard's closest friends, and would never do anything that would compromise Shepard's integrity."

Hackett gave Kaidan a long, searching, measuring glance before he finally nodded his acceptance of the Major's assessment. "That being said… How is Shepard doing?" Hackett asked, and Kaidan resisted the urge to shift his weight, remaining locked in the typical military 'at ease' posture that had been so ingrained in him it that it actually felt natural.

"Her file…" Kaidan began, but the admiral shook his head.

"No, Major Alenko, I am not asking about her physical recovery or anything else her file will tell me. I need someone who knows the commander, knows her well, to give me their opinion on her mental and emotional state. And you, Major, know the commander better than most," he replied, a knowing glint in his eye that made Kaidan's stomach drop at the implication. But of course, the Admiral knew. Likely the whole of London knew; he hadn't exactly been worried about charges of fraternization when he had pulled Shepard against him and kissed her goodbye in the middle of a crowded street before the final push.

"She is doing much better, Sir," Kaidan said, finally, and he took a deep breath. "When she first woke, she was confused, disoriented, babbling nonsense. But she's almost back to herself; she's harassing the medical staff, demanding to be released whenever they come in to check on her. But she still gets…mixed-up, on occasion, especially when she first wakes up."

"Mixed up?" Hackett queried, and Kaidan resisted the urge to fidget, feeling as though he was betraying Shepard by giving the information to their superior.

"She thinks the Normandy disappeared and most of the crew died on an unknown planet," he divulged. "But the delusion goes several minutes after waking and she comes back to herself," he added, and Hackett frowned deeply.

"Do you believe that she will be ready to return to active duty when she is discharged?" Hackett asked, and Kaidan hesitated a moment, mulling it over.

"Frankly, Sir, I believe it would do her some good. Shepard and downtime don't go well together; it's why she so rarely requests leave. I don't think the woman's capable of being content unless she has a mission to attend to," he replied, and saw the corners of Hackett's mouth lift upwards in response.

"Thank you, Major," Hackett said, nodding once to Kaidan. "Carry on."

Kaidan snapped a smart salute, the gesture occurring in a split second without any conscious thought behind it. As career military, some things remained second nature, even when the galaxy had gone to hell.

"And Major…" Hackett began before Kaidan had dropped back into a relaxed posed, so he remained at attention. "The regulations regarding fraternization appear rather trivial in light of the near-destruction of our species. But please, try to be a little more discreet; we don't want two of our best and brightest setting a poor example for the young and impressionable," He added, and Kaidan felt his ears heat as his face flushed.

"Understood, Sir," he replied, hoping he maintained some modicum of a professional demeanor as Hackett smirked and walked away.


End file.
